Robin Williams

We have a president for whom English is a second language. He’s like ‘We have to get rid of dictators,’ but he’s pretty much one himself.

You can start any Monty Python routine and people finish it for you. Everyone knows it like shorthand.

See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.

[on Popeye] If you watch it backwards, it has a plot.

Cocaine is God’s way of saying you’re making too much money.

I started doing comedy because that was the only stage that I could find. It was the pure idea of being on stage. That was the only thing that interested me, along with learning the craft and working, and just being in productions with people.

Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never mockeda disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him grovellingwhen he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media!

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

I needed to explore my talent and versatility and see if I had another side to me, another sound.

It’s just such a tangled-up issue, the way women present themselves [in comedy]-whether or not they choose to put their thumbs in their panties on the cover of Maxim and judge each other back and forth on it. It’s a complicated issue, and we didn’t go much further on saying anything other than to say, ‘Yeah, it’s a complicated issue and we’re all kind of figuring it out as we go.’

I’ve always been very positive and very resilient.

Our president-elect [Trump] has at various times said he’d bomb civilians, loot oil, and waterboard, which isn’t a military strategy so much as the series of words that Donald Rumsfeld mutters so he can stay hard while he’s masturbating.

I was born in ’74, so I missed out on all the great early ’60s and early ’70s.

An interim government was set up in Afghanistan. It included two women, one of whom was Minister of Women’s Affairs. Man, who’d she have to show her ankles to to get that job?

I was bored one day so my Dad took me to this acting school. I liked it more than having fun – I liked it for a job.

When I was a child, I had posters of James Dean in my room. I was a big admirer of his work and was fascinated by him living on the edge. Looking back, my life was kind of the same.

You have to keep reminding yourself it’s not about money, because there is a lot of money to be made in this business if you’re willing to do whatever. But that’s not what I’m thinking about. I continue only to take movies because I love the script and because I really want to do it.

I’d love to do a musical, either in film or on stage.

I feel like everyone you mentioned owes an enormous debt to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, because I think that started this trend of people having talkshows where they have a point of view that they’re not afraid to share.

You can’t even imagine how it felt to have a cassette that you could take with you with a microphone so you could put down an idea and not have to hum it a million times to remember what it was.

[On drum machines] Fantastic to write with. They have their place, they’re terribly useful to the musician, but they’re just another tool. They never will replace a good drummer. A lot of the bands that use them, I call them typewriter bands because basically they program the sample sounds with no real dynamics, and that dynamics is very important. And the records come out sounding very flat and very 2-dimensional whereas something with real dynamics and a good drummer can add another dimension – depth – to the band and that’s why bands that play together when they’re actually making the record will always sound better.